More than 130 million users tap on an Instagram Shopping posts each month, and if you're not selling there, you should be. We review the most popular ways to sell on Instagram and rank them based on functionality, ease-of-use, customer service & price.
SPOLIER ALERT: The best way to sell on Instagram is with Ecwid. Ecwid ranked #1, read why below.
Sure, you can easily set up a store directly on Instagram, but there are a few advantages to using an ecommerce builder that can super-power your ecommece sales. Ecwid ranked as the best place to sell on Instagram beating other storefront builder sites like Shopify, SquareUp and GoDaddy.
WHAT WE LIKED (MOST)
EASY INSTAGRAM POSTS – Ecwid is easy to create posts and promote on Instagram. But, you can simultaneously promote on FB, Pinterest, eBay, TikTok, and more. Control everything from a single dashboard with centralized inventory, order management, pricing, and more. One place, many channels.
FREE FOREVER – Ecwid has a “free forever” program vs Shopify’s limited 14 day or BigCommerce’s 30 days free trials. This is great because, personally, I need more than 14-30 days to get my business humming. (note, Ecwid’s free plan doesn’t require credit cards).
STORE SETUP – Ecwid make it super easy to import from your existing products to Facebook store so you can sell on Instagram. Yes, it costs $15/month (Venture plan) on Ecwid. And, once you have it, you can sell across so many other platforms, not just instagram.
BEST PRICE – Ecwid is a clear winner in the market, $15. On Shopify this costs you $29/month + transaction fees. And, on Ecwid’s $15 plan you can sell across more than just Instagram, not so on the others.
NO TRANSACTION FEES – Ecwid doesn’t charge additional transaction fees like Shopify or BigCommerce do. This is a huge advantage of Ecwid in our eyes.
OTHER THINGS WE LIKED
EASIEST STORE SETUP & MANAGEMENT – Ecwid was the easiest to set up products and your catalog. Ecwid’s dashboard and onboarding flow are the best we’ve seen, very logical on the backend when it comes to categorizing products, no apps required. Also allows for physical, digital and service types of products, not all do that without adding applications.
VERSATILE ORDER MANAGEMENT – Easily the best we’ve seen Ecwid allows you to bulk edit order and bulk print or export. But, on Shopify, you cannot bulk print orders.
BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE – Ecwid makes it easy to find customer support on the right-hand side navigation panel (call, live chat, email)
Ecwid Pricing Chart
How To Sell On Instagram Via Ecwid
#2 Shopify
WHAT WE LIKED
- GREAT DESIGNS – Shopify clearly are amazing for store design, just so many options.
- SEO TOOLS – Great for setting up SEO on your site, which can help with organic lead gen.
- APP STORE – thousands of apps that plug into whatever you need, most cost money though.
WHAT WE DIDN’T LIKE
- PLUGIN REQUIRED – Shopify requires you to download a plugin to start selling on Instagram, whereas Ecwid doesn’t.
- PRICE & TRANSACTION FEES – if you don’t use Shopify Pay then you get charged 2.4% to 2.9% + 30c per transaction. Ecwid has none of these and was free forever.
- CUSTOMER SUPPORT – while it is good, it took us a while to find it, hidden behind multiple clicks and help topics.
- MULTIPLE MARKETPLACE SELLING – while you can get apps to sell on other marketplaces there is a learning curve. Ecwid made it easier to sell across Amazon, FB, Instagram straight out of the box, no plugins or apps required.
- ORDER MANAGEMENT – couldn’t bulk print orders on Shopify, which is necessary for SMB’s.
#3 Instagram
WHAT WE LIKED
- EASY SETUP – Setting up your store on Instagram is pretty simple & straightforward, and a great photo-editing tool.
- STREAMLINED CHECK-OUT – Customers checking out on Instagram can do so easily. Check-out is not really any quicker or slower via a platform like Shopify or Ecwid.
WHAT WE DIDN’T LIKE
- NO MULTI-PLATFORM SELLING – Setting up a store direct on Instagram’s main flaw is that you can only sell on Facebook/Instagram. Why limit yourself? On Ecwid you can sell on so many other platforms from one account (Pinterest, Ebay, Google Shopping, Amazon).
- CUSTOMER REVIEWS – Instagram’s own customer service ratings threw us off, they only got 2/5 stars (vs 4.7/5 for Ecwid and 1.4/5 for Shopify).
- TRANSACTION FEES – according to the facebook help centre, the selling fee is 5% per shipment or a flat fee of $0.40 for shipments of $8.00 or less.
- ORDER MANAGEMENT – we prefer to have the analytics and order management tools for all our e-commerce channels in one place, together. If you’re direct on Instagram you need to consolidate this data somewhere. Might as well start in a platform like Ecwid or Shopify.
Ecwid Customer Reviews
Our Conclusion
If you haven’t guessed it already, we we would recommend starting on Instagram with Ecwid. It offer the best in functionality, ease of use and setup, customer support and pricing was the best. Also, it’s not just Instagram, they can help you sell across so many other channels. And it’s free to trial so it’s literally a no-brainer.
So, if you’re starting out on Instagram or you’re or you’re migrating an existing site then give Ecwid a try first, it’s free (forever, yes, forever).